


jette-toi dans la mer

by theoldgods



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/F, Heartache, Missing Scene, Ocean, Post-Canon, Yuletide, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28029564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: Héloïse has no choice but to swim, with or without Marianne.
Relationships: Héloïse & Sophie (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 29
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	jette-toi dans la mer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sea_changed (foxlives)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxlives/gifts).



When the painter finally disappears she knows a breath of peace, though Maman’s sidelong looks suggest that Héloïse will not be free for long. Maman decided weeks ago that Héloïse, too, is likely to fall from the cliffs, fated to the ocean just as Isabelle was, and has held her inside, even as Héloïse finished reading every scrap of paper in the house. Without the man to torment, she returns to fighting down the urge to argue the edict—Héloïse is angry, not despairing—and ignores both Maman and Sophie except for meals.

They’ve been alone for weeks when Maman announces over breakfast that she’s found someone to walk out with Héloïse.

“A companion,” Maman says, like she’s describing Héloïse’s future maid, a piece of her dowry. “Next week, if the weather holds. Won’t you like that, _tesoro_?”

She applies Italian thick and fast of late, trying to draw Héloïse into the city Maman so dearly misses, the past she will have for a daughter’s future, never mind which one. Héloïse does not reply, but when she stares out the window before going to sleep, she imagines herself arm-in-arm with Isabelle, as they had last met so many years ago, before convents and wretched barely-there apologies Héloïse cannot forget, though she burned Isabelle’s last letter in the reception room grate as soon as she arrived.

The new girl appears in the dark, her voice low organ music in the snatches Héloïse catches before Maman orders her back into the parlor for dinner. She sounds young, more Héloïse than Isabelle, and Héloïse curls up in bed imagining bright yellow curls, midway between Maman’s and Isabelle’s, perhaps deep grey eyes to match the water Héloïse has not seen since the ship here. (She imagines Isabelle, and hates herself for it, reminds herself that she is getting little more than a maid, another Sophie, nothing to wonder about for longer than it takes to loosen her stays.)

Nonetheless she sits wrapped in her cloak an hour or more before Maman allows her to go, waiting breathless, skin crackling with energy, in the entrance hall until she hears a rustle of fabric, quick unfamiliar steps. Her heart thrums at the base of her throat as she throws open the door, ignoring the sharp inhale behind her, and marches outside.

The air is brittle, whistling past her cloak as she gathers speed in her long march toward the sea. Héloïse does not know if she will stop, imagines herself careening over the edge to land alongside Isabelle, remembers the shadow Maman has given her, and runs, as she has not in years, tasting fog and salt. Curiosity, as much as the endless dull rage that curdles her stomach, forces her to stop, panting, her hands buried in the folds of her dress, and she turns to meet the price she must pay for her freedom.

The girl behind Héloïse, gasping in harmony with her, has Sophie’s dark hair and dark eyes, in a face long and sturdy. Her simple skirts are viciously, blessedly red, the same shade as the color suffusing both of their faces.

She looks nothing like Isabelle or Maman, nothing like anyone else that’s been brought here. Héloïse smiles as she speaks.

* * *

The hymns ring brightly in Héloïse’s head, long after she leaves Mass, organ mingling with Marianne’s wandering across the harpsichord, smiling and grimacing before remembering some order of Maman’s to do all she can to remind Héloïse of Milan. Héloïse hates the prodding but likes her playing, her darting glances and quiet surety, the banked fire that flares at the back of Marianne’s eyes when she thinks Héloïse is not paying her any mind.

They have traded almost endless not-quite-looks since that first moment on the cliffs, when Marianne was sure Héloïse wanted to die, a guess too brutal to be uninformed. As she walks back from Mass, taking her first long and solitary stroll across the deserted beach, Héloïse considers and then discards the idea of Maman saying anything in detail. It must have come from Sophie herself—and the image of Marianne watching Sophie, listening with gentle intensity to a maid, makes Héloïse’s chest tighten.

Héloïse sits on a rock with her skirts pooling around her, closes her eyes and breathes in and out with the breaking waves. A gull cries overhead, feral and fiercely alone in the weak autumn light, just as Héloïse is. She dreams of sliding into the water, as neat and sure as any sea bird, strong and certain in the waves, emerging with her mouth full of fish while Marianne laughs from the shore.

She thinks of Marianne, her twitching mouth and sly eyes and steady hands, murmuring like a convent bedmate into Héloïse’s ears, and shivers, cold and windswept and content.

* * *

Marianne—“I’ve finished your portrait,” low and unable to meet Héloïse’s eyes—urges her into the ocean at last without intending to do any such thing. Her betrayal should boil Héloïse’s blood, but more than anything it sets Héloïse’s skin itching, heavy under a thousand stolen glances, setting Héloïse’s inescapable future in paint. Héloïse strips clothing without bothering to look back, and Marianne keeps quiet, the weight of her gaze hot and uncertain through the thin fabric of Héloïse’s shift as Héloïse ignores the sand around her toes.

The water licks her ankles, nearly cold enough to burn, and Héloïse tastes blood as she bites her tongue to keep from crying out. She keeps the pressure, the tang of iron dripping into the back of her mouth, until she is angry enough to forget blood and salt, to stand up to her waist in the ocean and wish for each swell to push her under.

The gulls are silent; even the waves sound more like a wicked, snickering hiss at the base of her ears, drowned out by some wordless chant simmering in Héloïse’s head. It isn’t the soothing drone of Mass and it isn’t Marianne’s jangling harpsichord, but it’s something that wears Marianne’s face, dark miserable eyes and a quicksilver smile, pressure like a bruise spreading across Héloïse’s ribs and crawling into her guts.

Héloïse tosses her head, blows loose strings of hair from their haphazard place across her forehead. She is heavy and numb, teeth chattering, knees half bent, her arms skimming the tops of the waves while she hesitates. When she slides under, quick and stuttering, the cold seizes her scalp and pulls; her legs kick her free to spit water as she surfaces.

She pushes a clump of hair from her mouth and looks over her shoulder at a splotch of red and dark brown against the sand. Her leaden stomach leaps.

* * *

Marianne’s mouth is hot, her lips damp yet rough with salt and scratchy windblown sand. Their veils tangle around their chins, tickling, as Héloïse disappears under a wave of nauseous relief, a thousand half-formed feelings wrapping around her brain.

When she can think again, staring out the reception hall window at the distant cliffs, it’s past dinner and her sparkling nerves have abated into a low humming swell of fear. She wants Marianne, deft hands and sweaty skin, and her swollen heart chokes her, fills her mouth with a sweet bile. She paces back and forth in front of Marianne’s makeshift bed, stopping only at the shuffling of fabric against stone that pauses, hovering outside the door.

Héloïse cries out, or tries to, locked in a stone vise of dread for the eternity it takes Marianne to enter. Her face is somehow both stormy and blank, her steps tentative as if approaching a wild animal, and goose pimples coat the back of Héloïse’s neck.

Marianne’s head is dark and warm on Héloïse’s shoulder as she bends to brush her lips against Héloïse’s skin. Héloïse clings to the bobbing weight of Marianne, their fragile connection, to keep herself afloat.

* * *

The green silk is heavy, tangling around Héloïse’s legs while she stumbles through grass and stone and sand. Her nausea is back, rage and hopelessness bubbling in the deepest pits of her, pinpricks of hot emotion erupting across her bare skin where the wind batters her. The water is slate blue and angry, great spurting spindrift lifted from the roar of each crashing wave. It fades to nothing behind the churn of her thoughts, every last bit of pride and disappointment and yearning for something she has not yet lost.

The portrait is _good,_ and even that cannot be pleasant; Marianne’s skill is a wedge between them, a means for Marianne to control her that is all the more frightening for every way in which it isn’t wholly unwanted. Marianne’s freedom, Marianne’s arrogance, is an insult when all Héloïse is allowed are her petty sulks, meaningless anger she thought she had exorcised through Marianne’s brushes.

She wants to jump into the largest wave, crash beneath it like Isabelle over the cliffs, drowned in silk as much as salt. Instead she stands stiff and brittle, fingers moving through her dress, tenting and splaying the fabric, swooping strokes of vibrant color she can see even on the insides of her closed eyelids.

The warmth that encloses her does not immediately register as Marianne, though the thick sobs, choked and somehow musical, echo into her skull. She leans back into Marianne’s grip, slowly yet instinctively, tension draining from her shoulders. Marianne’s distress should not soothe her, and yet Héloïse finds comfort in realizing Marianne is as desolate as she is, that their pain can be shared.

They kiss, tears hot and bones shaking quietly, lips moving back to one another again and again.

* * *

The door slams on Marianne’s breathless, gleaming face, turned back in a final gift. Héloïse, a pallid ghost in her wedding finery, stands midway down the stairs for a long minute, unseeing and unhearing even as she obeys Maman’s call to return upstairs.

She sees Marianne’s face in the mirror opposite hers as she strips off the gown, in Sophie’s polite headbob as she fills their glasses, in Maman’s quiet stare across the after-dinner silence. She does not open Marianne’s Ovid, leaves it, potent and knowing, amongst the clutter in the abandoned reception hall.

Their last afternoon on the island is in early spring, long black nights leavened with mild breeze. Héloïse escapes both Maman and Sophie, leaving them to the packing while she returns to the reception hall. Even months later the dust motes in the air here swirl with Marianne, Marianne, Marianne; Héloïse bites her tongue as she circles the room, five times, ten, before swallowing hard and reaching under the sofa to withdraw the book. It falls open to page 30, and she hesitates before flipping back a page, sharply, nearly tearing the paper.

Marianne’s penciled stare chokes her, bleeds through the finger she shakily draws across it. Héloïse drinks her in until the sound of footsteps snaps her out of her reverie.

Sophie says nothing when Héloïse asks, merely wrinkles her nose in polite confusion before gathering a set of blankets. She follows Héloïse to the beach with her short, jerking steps, slow and steady, each breath an acute reminder that she is not Marianne. Her hands are nonetheless gentle as she helps Héloïse undress, fingers warm against Héloïse’s arm.

“You will watch.”

Héloïse means it like an order, a Milanese noblewoman in emerald silk speaking to her servant, but her whirling heart and Sophie’s soft smile catch her halfway through, warbling it into a question. Sophie does not speak, merely spreads one of their woolen blankets across the sand and settles onto it, linen-covered head bowed. Héloïse looks immediately away.

The water is ice. Héloïse marches up to her waist, humming under her breath to distract from the pain. It takes scant moments to sink under and hold her lungs taut, emerging shuddering seconds later to drift on her back, made buoyant by salt, and pull herself along, one tentative stroke, two, three, before putting her feet back down.

She stumbles out, sputtering and kicking up gobbets of sand into her face, and the first thing she sees is a splotch of dark hair, blown wild in the wind. Her frozen heart twists under her breastbone. When she catches sight of Sophie's face, pale as she attempts to simultaneously retie her cap and gather Héloïse’s blanket, Héloïse closes her eyes, pictures Marianne's smile, and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> I gave Héloïse's sister the name Isabelle, as I don't think she's named in canon.
> 
> The Countess uses a modern standard Italian endearment, which is possibly not period-accurate for 18th century Milan but is, to my non-native-speaker ears, in line with what they had her use in the actual film itself for simplicity's sake.
> 
> Comments and kudos and all the rest very welcome if you're so moved, and if you want films/gay films/gays mixed among your feed, I'm also on [tumblr.](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com)


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